Two weekends ago, my mom started craving carrot cake. She talked about it at lunch, mentioned it at dinner, and finally caved at 9 pm and drove to Safeway to pick up a slice. When she arrived home, she grabbed a fork, plopped down in her favorite armchair, and slowly savored every bite, stopping with enough left to finish the following day.
Although Mom bought me a slice of my favorite 6-layer chocolate cake at the same time, I couldn’t help but stare and hope with all of my fingers crossed behind my back that she’d offer me a taste. That cream cheese frosting… Those soft streaks of carrot… The tender cinnamon cake… It looked mesmerizing!
Despite enjoying every last morsel of my chocolate dessert, I couldn’t get carrot cake off of my mind. I pictured that square during every run (since my path went past the same grocery store) and whenever I stuck my head into the fridge for fresh fruit and veggie snacks.
I seriously contemplated baking my own again, but knowing that my self-control sometimes flies straight out the window with any type of cake, I went with the next best thing…
Cookies! These Healthy Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies blew me away, and not just from their built-in portion control. The cozy oats, the comforting cinnamon, the soft carrots… They truly tasted just like carrot cake. Pure bliss in every bite!
Even better? These cookies are really easy to make — and faster than regular carrot cake too!
KEY INGREDIENTS TO MAKE HEALTHY CARROT CAKE OATMEAL COOKIES
Let’s talk about the key ingredients that you’ll need to make these healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies! I based them off of the most popular recipe on my site: my oatmeal raisin cookies. Have you tried those yet? Hands down, they’re the BEST oatmeal cookies I’ve ever eaten. They’re soft, tender, chewy — everything a cookie should be — and countless readers have said nobody believes that they’re lightened up and made without refined flour or refined sugar!
Oats. Like many of my other healthy oatmeal cookie recipes, you’ll use instant oats to make these. They’re also called “quick cooking” and “one minute” oats. They’re not the ones that come in packets with flavors like maple brown sugar and apple cinnamon!
Just like old-fashioned rolled oats, instant oats contain just one ingredient: oats! However, they differ in one key way. Instant oats are smaller and thinner than old-fashioned rolled oats. This smaller size means they soften faster, and that yields the best soft and chewy texture in your oatmeal cookies.
Tip: If you’d like to make your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies gluten-free, then substitute certified gluten-free instant oats. They work perfectly!
Flour. I opted for whole wheat flour to make these oatmeal cookies. I love how it has more fiber and micronutrients!
Tip: If you’d like to make your carrot cake oatmeal cookies gluten-free, then see the Notes section of the recipe. I’ve included how to do so there!
Cinnamon. It’s a carrot cake staple! I love the cozy flavor it adds to both regular carrot cake and these healthy oatmeal cookies. If you’re a big cinnamon fan (like I am!), I highly recommend this variety. It tastes a bit stronger, sweeter, and richer than regular cinnamon. Many stores have started stocking it, but I generally buy it online here. It’s really affordable — and basically the only kind I now use in my baking!
Unsalted butter or coconut oil. Just a bit! Unlike more traditional cookie recipes that call for ½ cup or more, you only need 2 tablespoons. That really helps keep your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies low calorie and low fat!
Tip: Both work equally well, so feel free to use whichever one you normally keep on hand. If you use coconut oil, your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies will be dairy-free!
Egg. A common oatmeal cookie ingredient! The egg binds everything together, and it also yields a beautifully chewy texture.
Sweetener. For this version, I swapped out the honey from my oatmeal raisin cookie recipe for pure maple syrup. I love its sweet and cozy flavor in my carrot cake recipe, and I had a feeling it’d work well in these cookies too. Spoiler alert: It was perfect!
Pure maple syrup often comes in thin glass bottles or squat plastic jugs (like this). It only contains one ingredient: maple syrup!
Tip: Skip the pancake syrup and sugar-free maple syrup! These contain other ingredients, which can change the way they behave in baking recipes. This is particularly true of sugar-free maple syrup! It’s usually water-based, and that will make your cookies cakey or bready, rather than chewy.
Carrots. Lots and lots of carrots. I love my regular carrot cake positively packed with them — not just a plain spice cake with the occasional fleck of orange — so I took the same approach with these healthy oatmeal cookies. That turned out so well!
For the best taste and texture, use peeled and freshly grated carrots. Don’t substitute store-bought, pre-shredded carrots! They’re also called “matchstick carrots.” They’re thicker and drier, so they don’t soften properly. It only takes a few moments to grate your own, and I promise the results are completely worth it!
HOW TO MAKE HEALTHY CARROT CAKE OATMEAL COOKIES
Let’s quickly go over how to make the best carrot cake oatmeal cookies! This recipe is easy and straightforward — I promise! — and I also have some tips to ensure your cookies turn out beautifully soft, chewy, and flavorful.
Measure correctly. This is one of the most crucial parts of this recipe! It’s extremely important to measure the oats and flour correctly. Do NOT scoop them directly from the container! Instead, use this method or a kitchen scale. (← That’s the one I own!) Scooping or improperly measuring can result in up to 1 ½ times as much of either ingredient. That extra amount of flour or oats will change the texture of your cookies, especially the oats! They act like little sponges by soaking up lots of moisture in the dough. Too much of either will dry out your cookies and make them cakey, bready, or dry — but if you measure them correctly, your cookies will be perfectly soft and chewy!
Chill the dough. Chilling is mandatory! It gives the oats time to soak up some moisture and helps reduce spreading. If you skipped chilling, the cookie dough would flatten thinner than a pancake while in the oven and create one huge cookie blob on the baking sheet. Not good! So avoid cookie blobs and chill your dough. Just 30 minutes — that’s it!
Drop + shape. The cookie dough will still be somewhat soft and sticky after chilling, so use a spoon and spatula to drop it onto the baking sheet. Because it only spreads some — but not a lot — you’ll also flatten it a bit to give your cookies a “head start” on spreading.
Tip: These are the spatulas I use. They’re so handy — and really cute too!
Bake + cool. It’s time! Slide that baking sheet in the oven. To ensure these cookies stay soft and chewy, you’ll underbake them ever so slightly. Just by a hair! Pull them out when the centers still feel a little soft and squidgy. You’ll let the cookies cool for a full 10-15 minutes on the warm baking sheet, and the residual heat will finish cooking those centers all the way through without the outsides turning cakey, bready, or crunchy. This is my #1 tip for the best soft and chewy oatmeal cookies! They’ll stay soft for an entire week… If they last that long!
Reshape (optional). If your cookies look a little lopsided and not completely round when you remove them from the oven, then immediately grab a butter knife and gently nudge any misshapen bits back into place. Their sides are still a bit malleable when they’re hot and fresh from the oven, but since these cookies set and firm up within minutes, work really quickly!
I secretly tried hoarding these healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies, but that plan didn’t stand a chance around my hungry sweet-toothed family. Every time I walked by the counter, another one had mysteriously disappeared from the jar!
Oh well, at least we’re getting some extra veggies in… Right? 😉 And when you make your own, remember to snap a picture and share it on Instagram using #amyshealthybaking and tagging @amyshealthybaking IN the photo itself! (That guarantees I’ll see your picture! 🙂 ) I’d love to see your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies!
Healthy Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (100g) instant oats (measured like this and gluten-free if necessary)
- ¾ cup (90g) whole wheat flour or gluten-free* flour (measured like this)
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 2 tbsp (28g) coconut oil or unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- 1 large egg (room temperature)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup (120mL) pure maple syrup (room temperature)
- ¾ cup (68g) freshly grated carrots (about 1 smallish medium, peeled first!)
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the coconut oil or butter, egg, and vanilla. Stir in the maple syrup until thoroughly incorporated. Add in the flour mixture, stirring just until incorporated. Fold in the carrots. Chill the cookie dough for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 325°F, and line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
- Using a spoon and spatula, drop the cookie dough into 14 rounded scoops on the baking sheet. Flatten slightly using a spatula. (These cookies don't spread very much!) Bake at 325°F for 12-15 minutes. Cool on the baking sheet for at least 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
Notes
View Nutrition Information + Weight Watchers Points
You may also like Amy’s other recipes…
♡ Ultimate Healthy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
♡ Healthy Apple Pie Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Healthy Zucchini Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Healthy Banana Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Healthy Flourless Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Ultimate Healthy Carrot Cake
♡ Healthy Carrot Cake Cupcakes
…and the rest of Amy’s healthy oatmeal cookie recipes and healthy carrot cake flavored recipes!
Can I use almond flour in these?
I really appreciate your interest in my recipe, Alli! I’ve actually answered this exact question on my Oatmeal Cookie FAQ Page, and there’s a link to that FAQ Page in the Notes section of the recipe box (located underneath the Instructions). I know it can be easy to miss though! 😉 I’d love to hear what you think of these cookies if you try making them!
What about adding unsweetened coconut to the carrot cake cookies?
We really appreciate your interest in this recipe! We have had several readers share that adding shredded unsweetened coconut to these cookies has worked out well! We’d love to hear what you think if you decide to make a batch! 🙂
Thank you for this recipe. I feel like with the gluten free options, this would also be fairly easy to make vegan. Would I just need to substitute the egg and use the other gluten free options in order to achieve that? (to make it gluten free/vegan) If so, what egg replacement would you recemmend? I have read sooo many different things, but I don’t want to add too much moisture with applesauce. I am not sure about silken tofu or but butters, and I have never even heard of ‘chia eggs’ lol. Please help! My husband is participating at a men’s conference at our church and I am trying to provide several options for desserts because I know there are vegans, gluten free, etc.
Sorry, I meant NUT butters! Not but butters!!!
We really appreciate your interest in this recipe, Laura! It’s so thoughtful of you to provide different dessert options for those attending the men’s conference!
Amy has a family member that’s allergic to eggs, and Ener-G is her favorite substitute. In case you haven’t heard of it, Ener-G is a shelf-stable powder that keeps for ages. It works perfectly as an egg replacer in nearly all of our recipes, including this one! For our recipes, use 1 ½ teaspoons Ener-G + 2 tablespoons warm water for each egg white, and you’ll need an additional ½ tablespoon of butter or coconut oil {or stick-style vegan butter, if you’re planning to make this vegan friendly!} for each egg yolk.
Otherwise, for these particular oatmeal cookies, you can substitute ¼ cup (56g) of unsweetened applesauce for the large egg to make them vegan. However, the applesauce prevents them from spreading, so flatten the mounds of cookie dough to be about ½” tall using a spatula prior to baking. (They’ll look the same before and after baking — just no longer raw — so shape and smooth out the edges with the spatula before baking, if you’d like them to look nice and round too!)
As far as making this recipe gluten-free, we have included notes on substitutions in the notes section, directly below the recipe in case you missed it!
We’d love to hear how your cookies turn out! 🙂
Can these cookies be made in a 8×8 pan?
Yes, absolutely! An 8″-square baking pan is perfect, and you can use the same baking temperature. You can skip the chilling time (since you don’t need to worry about how much the cookies will spread! 😉 ), and I’d recommend starting to check on them after baking for the same amount of time. They’ll be done baking when the edges look firm but the center still looks slightly soft and underdone when you remove the pan from the oven. If the edges of your cookie bars begin to pull away from the edges of your pan within 10 minutes of removing them from the oven, then you’ve baked them long enough! The heat from the warm pan will continue cooking the center all the way through while you let them cool to room temperature. Therefore, for the best texture results, let them cool completely to room temperature in the pan before slicing into bars. (If you have enough time to let them rest for an hour or more once at room temperature, that would be even better!)
I’m excited to hear what you think of them, Lynn!